Alfred Adler

The oldest of human striving is to be at one with our fellow human beings

Thomas Merton

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

Talmud

There are stars who's light only reaches the earth long after they have fallen apart. There are people who's remembrance gives light in this world, long after they have passed away. This light shines in our darkest nights on the road we must follow.

God's Fool

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.

Death Penalty

Mother Teresa

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Gifts

God created all things...elastic waistbandsare my favorite!

Cluster Map

This Journey

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Counter

Mohandas Gandhi

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

St. Francis of Assisi

Love is...

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres...

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Thomas Merton

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Albert Einstein

There are only twoways to Live your Life.One is as thoughnothing is a Miracle.The other is as ifEverything is a Miracle.

Love IS the Rule

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' "This is the great and foremost commandment. "

And a second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40)

“We are not called upon to do all the good possible but only that which we can do”

Mother Theodore Guerin

"You don't have to be extraordinary, just forgiving." Mattafix

Loving Commitment

We can disagree on the death penalty, we can disagree on homosexuality, we can disagree on the status of women and still bind our hearts together in a common, united, generous, friendly, loving commitment

Jimmy Carter

"If you are a theologian, you pray truly; and if you pray truly, you are a theologian"

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any "how.'”

Viktor Frankl

We Have Been Called...

We have been called to heal the wounds,

to unite what part has fallen apart,

and to bring home those who have lost their way.

St. Fancis of Assisi

Dalai Lama

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

Charter for Compassion

Interdependency

We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately."

Elie Wiesel

Family

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.

If the minds love one another

The home will be as a beautiful as a flower garden.

But if these minds get out of harmony with each other

It is like a storm which plays havoc

With the garden.

The Buddha

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Katrina Two Years Later: the Gulf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-kk4yup5g

Hurricane Katrina Aftermath: Biloxi MississippiAll of our residents were from the places all of America was watching on the television: Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, Biloxi,Picayune and of course New Orleans.

The residents would sit around the television watching the news to see what their neighborhoods were like. It was unreal. Time after time they saw neighborhoods, their house totally under water. Bypasses were submerged, swamp boats were floating over their roofs.

We constantly worried about the outbreak of infectious diseases but we were lucky, that did not occur.

Finally they were allowed to go back to view their homes and bring back any important paperwork that may have survived. The National Guard controlled the areas. Folks were allowed to enter specific neighborhoods at 6 AM and had to be out at 6 PM. There was no power, no lights and the areas were full of debris, and safety demanded strict rules.

However, most of these towns along the coast in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama were along the same highways. That meant thousand and thousands of people congesting limited access. Our folks left our shelter at 2 and 3 AM and returned the next day after midnight. They would laugh at how unbelievable every sight was and then they would cover their faces with their hands and weep. It was a difficult day.

Many had to decide if they would ever return to home or if they would start over somewhere else in America. All were desperate for work. Some were jealous of the coverage New Orleans received because unlike The Big Easy, many of these towns received far more extensive structural damage. However, the truth was there was more than enough sorrow to go around.

My last evening in Alabama my manager was driving me back to GulfShores. We were a few miles from Picayune and he decided to drive over and look at what Katrina did. It was impossible. As far as you could see on Highway Ten was bumper to bumper traffic standing still. The last thing they needed was trauma tourists, we turned around. Nine month later I would be in New Orleans walking under Highway Ten. I would remember this traffic jam from hell. I would remember the client who sat on the highway pavement for two days only to have her flesh stick to the pavement when she was finally rescued. I would remember that this disaster was bigger than I could have ever imagined